The U.S. “M1” rifle, also known as the M1 Garand rifle, was the main battle rifle of the U.S. military from 1936 to 1957. While considered to be technologically advanced in its time, the M1 suffers from several shortcomings. For example, the gas operating system employed on the M1 utilizes an operating rod that is nearly as long as the barrel and a gas cylinder that is mounted very close to the barrel. In order for the rifle to function properly the operating rod must bent in a manner to clear the stock. These bends in the operating rod, combined with its length, result in a fragile system that is not capable of withstanding pressures associated with more modern ammunition or higher pressure calibers.
A clip is a device that is used to store multiple rounds of ammunition together as a unit, ready for insertion into a receptacle of a firearm. This speeds up the process of loading and reloading the firearm because several rounds can be loaded at once, rather than one round being loaded at a time. The M1 rifle is designed to feed ammunition from eight-round en bloc clips. With this design, both the round and the clip are inserted as a unit into a fixed magazine within the rifle, and the clip is usually ejected or falls from the rifle upon firing or chambering of the last round. The M1 is configured such that rounds are fed from the top of the rifle, though an open receiver top, requiring that any added optics or other accessories be mounted on the side of the receiver. The en bloc clip has the further shortcoming of limiting magazine capacity to eight rounds.
The M1 rifle also uses an indirect bolt stop mechanism that acts on the operating rod, not the bolt itself. The design of the stock on the M1 rifle employs two hand guards to cover the barrel and the operating rod, and which extends nearly to the muzzle of the rifle, thereby limiting barrel diameter and preventing the implementation of a free floating barrel/gas system. Rifles of similar design have usually suffered from similar limitations or utilize gas systems having multiple moving parts. Such rifles have also been limited to short-action rifle round, e.g. .308, of limited power and versatility.
What is needed is a rifle comparable in simplicity to the M1 rifle with all its desirable qualities and rugged reliability when used as designed, yet able to handle higher-pressure loads, longer-action calibers, e.g., .30-06, .300 WM through .458M, modern optics, and free float barrel groups for enhanced accuracy, while accommodating shorter barrel lengths and overall configurations.